4 customers you should fire
Not long ago we published a guest post from the noted customer service guru, Shep Hyken, titled “Don’t Just Fix the Problem, Fix the Customer.” Shep wisely points out that it’s just as important to repair your relationship with customers as it is to deal with the technical side of whatever problems they are experiencing with your product or service. However, there are times when you need to sever your relationship with certain customers or clients. In other words, as much as we hate to do it: Sometimes you have to fire the customer. This is, of course, a decision that cannot be taken lightly. Right now you may be feeling uneasy about one or more of your customers, but you just aren’t comfortable about what to do next. Let me give you some perspective, guidelines, and rationale that will help you make the right decision and give you the confidence to carry out your decision. 1. Customer demands too much time You know the costs that go into manufacturing your product, buying your inventory, or providing your service. However, do you know the hours your team spends selling and servicing these items? If you own a print shop, for example, and you find that one customer takes up three times as many hours as your average customer, it’s probably time to start turning down that person’s business. The same thing applies to your salesforce. If closing a sale and maintaining a particular account eats up far more time than the average account, you might be best served by moving on. The old saying that “time is money” is true and when certain customers routinely take far more time than average, you have entered into a lost-opportunity situation. In other words, your time would be better spent finding new and less demanding customers. 2. Customer is disrupting your business There are some customers that are a pain in the you-know-what to deal with. If they are merely picky or eccentric, that’s usually fine. However, there are some behaviors that cross the line, such as: Disrespecting your employees, Ignoring personal boundaries, Dishonesty, and Causing too much negativity. You need to put your team first. If your employees feel safe and happy at work, that will be reflected in everything they do and your small business will greatly benefit. But if they feel threatened, belittled, or engulfed in a cloud of negativity, that will also be reflected in their work. Productivity will go down. Customer relationships will suffer, and turnover will go through the roof. Also, if a customer proves to be dishonest, it’s really impossible to develop a long-term business relationship. You must know that your customers will keep up their end of any business agreement you enter into together. If you continue to work with a customer that you know is dishonest, you will eventually get burned and it will be your fault. In the long run, your business will prosper more without these problem customers. 3. Customer is chronically late with payment It is common for small business owners to work with customers who are having trouble paying their bills. However, there must be a point at which you draw the line, stop extending credit, and cease selling to or servicing the customer. Look at the progress the...
read moreHow to know when it’s time to fire an employee
Deciding when it’s time to fire an employee isn’t an exact science. Occasionally a burst of outrageous behavior will make the decision obvious, but that’s seldom the case (fortunately!). Putting the issue in a broader perspective helps. I once heard someone divide employees into four groups: Type D: Those who won’t do their work, or rarely do their work, or require constant supervision Type C: Those who will do their work when told Type B: Those who will do the work they’re told to do and then ask what else they can do Type A: Those who will do the work they’re told to do and then find what else needs to be accomplished and do it on their own. Ideally, you want all the positions in your small business to be filled with Type A and Type B workers. They make your job much easier and they make your small business much better. But we live in the real world, and not everyone you hire will fall into one of those top two desirable categories. When Type D employees aren’t doing the work they were hired to do and you have given them sufficient training and sufficient feedback, then you’ve given them a sufficient chance to make it – fire them. While the process or act of firing anyone is never easy, in these cases at least, the decision should be obvious. When to fire ‘adequate’ employees Your job as a small business owner and employee supervisor is to help your employees get better at their jobs and also become better employees. In other words, you should try to help Type C employees become Type A or B employees, and Type B employees become Type A employees. You should put Type A employees on a path of increasing responsibilities and don’t be surprised one day if they decide it’s time to go off on their own and start their own business. But despite your best efforts, there’s a good chance that some of your employees will be solid Type C workers and unlikely to progress any further. They are happy where they are at and have no desire or drive to be promoted. To help you determine if you should keep them on your team, evaluate them in light of the following questions. Is the employee bringing people down, having a negative influence? If the employee’s work habits are detrimental to others, then it’s probably a good time to part ways. This assumes, of course, that you have spoken to the employee and worked with him to turn around the negativity. Is the employee demanding too much of your time, or of his direct supervisor’s time? If the employee is a high-maintenance “time eater” then it’s a good idea to fire him. Your productivity and the productivity of the employee’s supervisor are being diminished. You might find that firing this employee is almost like hiring someone because overall, more will get accomplished! Will the employee be easy to replace at the same salary? Can you afford to pay more? If the Type C employee is being paid very little, it will be far more difficult to find a replacement who is a Type B or Type A “out of the box.” If you can, bump the pay rate....
read moreThis week in small business: Entrepreneurial tips for everyone!
The old InterWeb was teeming with articles and advice on entrepreneurship this week, so if you want to start or significantly grow your business, you’re in for a treat. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation Apparently it’s not such a gamble for women entrepreneurs and business owners in Nevada. They are closing the gender gap. Melissa Halliburton combined her love for pets with a problem that needed solving and used it to launch a very promising startup. Struggling? Then this piece that outlines entrepreneurial success through failure is a must-read. Also on the topic of entrepreneurial success, you’ll want to check yourself against these three habits. Today, extremely useful tools are no further away than your computer or smartphone. Mike Templeman lists 11 online tools every entrepreneur needs. Want to grow your company 57,000 percent over, say, three year’s time? Read this. Leadership, management, and productivity Busy parents who are trying to “juggle it all” will appreciate the seven podcasts described here. If you’re looking for a way to expand your business, you might be inspired by the story of All Seasons in Morehead, Kentucky. Marketing and sales The single most important strategy in content marketing today is video, whether it’s video on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, or Youtube, says Gary Vaynerchuk. Sean G. McCormick says that in marketing, 2017 promises to be “The Year of Change Management.” If you need a boost to your online marketing strategy, check out the 10 tips in this article. You’ve heard me say that the riches are in the niches and this article on how to reach those niche audiences plays well into that strategy. Julia McCoy essentially makes the case (citing 10 statistics) that “content marketing” is really just “marketing” today. In this LinkedIn Solutions Blog article, we get 20 content marketing optimization ideas from Andy Crestodina. There are many business sectors that can benefit enormously from visual content marketing so this article dishes up 19 Instagram...
read more13 Tips and Tactics to Propel Your Small Business Growth
What does it mean to “grow your business”? Is it the same thing as increasing profits, the bottom line? Or does it mean increasing sales, the top line? It’s important to understand the relationship between these two approaches to business “growth” and how they fit into the evolution of your business. For example, if you’re approaching the day when you want to sell your business, improving your bottom line via efficiencies and other strategies might be the best way of “growing” your business. I say this because a concerted effort to increase overall sales in the short term could make you look less profitable to potential buyers and your selling price would be pushed down. However, if you’re younger and eager to see your piece of the pie grow substantially, you might be totally comfortable living with a dip in profits while you develop new territories and/or new products. With those points in mind, you’ll be better able to consider the following 13 tips and tactics as you plot out the ideal game plan for the growth of your small business. Near-term small business growth tips: Analyze the performance of your sales team. If they aren’t meeting your expectations, or they are showing signs of ambivalence, shake things up. Bring in new blood working on commission only. Write down everything you do and categorize these tasks. Find tasks that you can delegate to others or outsource. Re-examine purchasing and see if you can improve the deals you are getting from your vendors. Improve your accounts receivable ratio. Look at repetitive tasks you and your team perform. Do they all have procedures written for them? See how they can be accomplished more quickly and be sure you have procedures that capture the most productive ways of accomplishing repetitive tasks. Be sure that you allow these procedures to be improved on over time; don’t fall victim to the “We’ve never done it like that here” mentality. Audit your small business listings on the Internet. See if there are any places where you should be listed but aren’t. Be sure listings are accurate. Check your Google reviews. Encourage customers to review your business on Google. Launch a customer referral program. Reward existing customers for bringing you new business. Launch a customer loyalty program. Medium-term small business growth tips: Research your local competitors and similar businesses in other areas. Find out if any owners may be approaching retirement age or there are other reasons they might want to sell. Talk to mutual suppliers to see if any might be in financial trouble. Survey your customers and find out what other products or services they need. See if there are any of your suppliers that might be ripe for a buyout. Long-term small business growth tips: Talk to city and regional planners to discover the areas that are slated for new development. Should you prepare to expand to any of these areas, or perhaps relocate to a bigger facility? Talk to real estate professionals to find neighborhoods in transition. For example, if a low-income area is beginning to be “gentrified,” it often means that young families with children will soon become the prominent demographic. Also, check out aging neighborhoods, they can “turn over” to younger, affluent families. As you can see, some of these points...
read moreHow to bring your product or service to market
Books and entire business school masters classes have been built on the topic of how to bring your product to market, but my purpose here is a little different. These extensive courses and lengthy books start from the point of having an idea, dealing with patents, getting it manufactured, and all the other steps before it gets into the hands of consumers. I’m going to assume that you already have your product or service and just need to get it out there in the marketplace. Even this modest slice of getting a product to market can be a huge subject, so my goal is to give you a big enough picture and sufficient directions to get you started in what will be the most productive and shortest route to commercial success. Your first step is to put your product or service in the right “bucket.” In other words, categorize it properly. The categories I’m going to focus on here are: Digital products, Boutique products, and Mass market, high volume, products. There are some strategies when marketing products in these general categories that cross over and I’ll point those out as we go along and mention a few more at the end. Taking digital products to market There are many kinds of digital products. Some are simple, like e-books. Others can be more involved, such as membership websites and online courses. Here are marketing approaches you can take, as well as some specific strategies, tactics, and tools you can use. Build community. I’m using this phrase in both a general and specific sense. You could consider your email list your community. However, many successful digital products have an actual online community supporting them. Facebook and the WarriorForum would be prime examples. Building a community could be accomplished through getting people to “like” your Facebook page, follow you on Twitter or other social media platforms, opt-in your email list, or join your forum. Non-digital products can also make good use of many of these community-building strategies. Display advertising. I’m using the term “display advertising” to differentiate it from search engine marketing. If you subscribe to any digital newsletters that have a big circulation, you have probably seen third party advertisements included in the newsletter. A company like Launchbit specializes in connecting advertisers to newsletters that would be a good fit. Search engine marketing. There are two branches here: organic search and paid search advertising. Organic search strategies are simply website tactics that push your website(s) to the top of search results pages. Important concepts to understand to be successful at organic SEM include search engine optimization (SEO), landing pages, website structure, and microsites. Even if you don’t sell digital products, you want your website to rank highly, therefore you must understand and implement SEO. The paid side of search engine marketing is characterized by programs such as Google’s AdWords, where you bid on keywords. If you have a winning bid, your small text ad is featured prominently at the top of the search results page. Retargeting is another important strategy. This is when someone shows interest in your product or service via sites visited on the Internet and then an ad for your product or service pops up on other sites that the prospect visits. The prospect who showed interest in...
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